Casting: a tale of walking in our patients shoes (or casts as the case may be)

I was never told in any of my elementary education classes in college that the day might come when my sweet and sassy kindergarteners would get to SAW my cast off…but this week, that day arrived! I probably wasn’t prepared for that scenario because in no other school can I ever imagine a situation where that would happen, but if you hadn’t noticed, I do not teach in an ordinary school!

Every year before the orthopedic surgeries start on our patients with bowed and windswept legs, the kindergartners and I traipse down the gangway and down to the dock where we enter the rehab tent. We get to be a part of the training for the orthopedic surgeries, which involves teaching the rehab team and day crew how to put casts on patients. We get to help out with this because kindergartners have small legs, so practicing on them doesn’t take up too much of our plaster supply, and also because a lot of the patients the rehab team will be casting will be about the size of my kindergartners. Every year I ask if I too can get a cast, and every year I am told that I cannot because my legs are too big and they can’t waste the plaster (only thing my legs have EVER been too big for!). Am I the only one who always wanted to have a cast, but never wanted to actually get hurt to do it? Well this time by dream came true!

Before going down to the rehab tent, we talked as a class about why some patients needs to have casts on their legs and what the rehab team does. I showed them pictures of patients with casts on and pictures of my previous students getting casts put on. 

I told them what a special opportunity this is that we get to be the class to go down and help the team learn how to cast. We get very amped up and excited! We enthusiastically walk down to the tent and everything is thrilling…until they bring out the saw, which they use to cut the casts off. It always gets very real in that moment. That’s when the rubber meets the road because that is the moment each student must decide for him or herself if he or she will actually go through with this plan.  Getting the cast put on is exciting, but they know that if a cast is put on, it must come off and there is no way around the saw. I have had students back out at this point, because that instrument makes a rather scary sound and it looks sharp. 

The rehab team is always so sweet and encouraging and they let us touch the blade as they explain that it won’t cut their skin and they explain that it just “tickles the cast off” (meaning it vibrates through the plaster).

This year, after showing the cast saw, they asked for a volunteer and one of my little guys immediately was in. He hopped up on the table while seventeen crew members gathered in a semi-circle around it and the lead orthopedic surgeon got to work explaining and demonstrating on my student. He held very still and was a great example! 

Meanwhile, my two girls found the big rehab balls and had a grand time rolling around the entrance of the tent. I wasn’t sure that my girls were actually going to go through with the casting. 

When the surgeon was done demonstrating on my first little guy, he told the crew members to group up to practice themselves and I asked which of my girls wanted to get on which table. They happily obliged and hopped up to have their own casts done. 

Once they were settled in and I had taken a sufficient number of photos (hundreds!), I got to get on my own table and have the process done to me! I gave my little guy my phone camera and he happily walked around taking pictures of all of us.

I was a bit concerned because as I was getting my cast put on, my girls were having theirs taken off. I am generally right there when they get the casts off in case they get scared and need a hand to hold, but I couldn’t be because I was stuck on my own table and in my own cast. I kept sending my sweet little guy to check on the girls and to ask if they were ok, and they were! What troopers! After they had all had their casts taken off, the rehab team leader asked them if they wanted to come cut off Miss Beth’s cast! Wait! What?!? I could see this going horribly wrong, but if course it didn’t and they were so thrilled to get to cut through the fiberglass and plaster (along with my friend Allan, the rehab team lead). They each got to take home their plaster cast at the end of the fieldtrip!

What a special opportunity this was for everyone involved! The rehab team got some little legs (and one larger one) to practice on, and we got to be one step closer to understanding what it’s like for our patients who wear those heavy casts, not for thirty minutes like we did, but for so much longer! Those kiddos are absolute champs for coming to a strange place, trusting complete strangers to repair their legs and lead them through months of rehab to teach them to walk again. In a setting where the patients can be a bit scary to us kindergartners because they speak a different language and wear hospital gowns and have dressings and tubes and wires, it’s oh so good to have one more experience in common that helps us walk in their shoes and brings us just a little closer together.

*I know I’ve said this before, but I’d just like to end with a BIG shout out to the fantastic crew members, like our rehab team, who make time for our littlest crew members and let them know they are just as valuable and just as much part of this crew as anyone! What a blessing!